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Saturday, October 17, 2009

This dream home desperately in need of Catholic ownership to keep the chapel open and the presbytery in a good state of repair. email me gillibrand@belgacom.net or telephone 0032 2503 4200 if you are interested- 552000 euro. Joint ownership also possible depending on others interested.

The main (oldest and nicest) part of the house is two storey with kitchen, dining room and drawing room on the ground floor and two bedrooms and two bathrooms on the first floor. There are two wings (making a three sided front courtyard). Each wing is made up of three rooms and a bathroom. There are many sets of French doors in the house so that both wings could be made self-contained.

Vatican City, 17.10.2009 (KAP) Curial Cardinal Antonio Canizares Llovera and the Prefect of the Apostolic Signatura, Archbishop Raymond Leo Burke appointed new members of the Congregation for Bishops by the Pope, the Vatican announced on Saturday. Both are thus under the direction of Cardinal Prefect Giovanni Battista Re responsible for the care of over 4,800 bishops, especially as far as personnel decisions are concerned.

Canizares was appointed in December last year from leading the Archdiocese of Toledo, Spain to be head of the Roman Congregation for Divine Worship. The U.S. jurist Burke, formerly Archbishop of Saint Louis, has been from June 2008 Prefect of the Vatican's highest appeals court, the Apostolic Signatura.

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Regensburg, Germany - Richard Williamson, a British-born Catholic fundamentalist clergyman who has claimed the Nazis had no Holocaust gas chambers, may face a summary fine in Germany, a judge disclosed Thursday.

In Germany, denying the Holocaust is a hate crime. If Williamson accepts the fine as a penalty for sedition, he would not have to appear in court.

Johann Ploed, a judge in the city of Regensburg, declined to say what the penalty would be, but said, 'It would likely be a fine.' The prosecutors had applied Wednesday for the fine, but only judges can order it. They needed a week to review the case, he said.

Pope Benedict XVI repealed in January the excommunication of Williamson, who has been consecrated a bishop by his own Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX). Williamson's anti-Holocaust remarks on German soil to a Swedish interviewer became public knowledge soon after.

Speaking late last year, Williamson, 69, alleged that the Nazi gas chambers had never existed, and 'only 200,000 to 300,000 Jews' had been killed by the Nazis. He was speaking at an SSPX seminary near Regensburg.

Williamson has said through his lawyer that he was assured his remarks would not be broadcast in Germany, but only in Sweden, a nation where there is no law against Holocaust denial.

A Munich newspaper, the Sueddeutsche Zeitung, said the prosecutors had received a letter from the Swedish television producers in which they denied offering any assurance to Williamson that the interview, conducted in English, would be broadcast in Sweden only.

Presiding judge Ploed said that since Williamson does not live in Germany, any summary fine could be served on his attorney instead.

Williamson's remarks outraged many Catholics and Jews, and led to criticism of the Vatican reconciliation with the SSPX splinter group.

Historical research using population data suggests between 5 million and 6 million European Jews were killed by privation and violence during the Second World War. The Yad Vashem memorial in Jerusalem estimates it has names of up to 4 million.

They met their deaths in different ways. Hundreds of thousands of Jews were 'exterminated' with gas at Auschwitz death camp.

Friday, October 09, 2009

The Catholic Bishops' Conference described the internal German Protestant Church (EKD) paper with the criticism of Archbishop Zollitsch as containing "harsh sentences". The EKD is called upon to clarify the matter.

The paper on the situation of the Catholic Church published by the Internal information service of the Protestant Church in Germany (EKD) has kicked up a powerful dust storm. The publication was like a "total meltdown," it was said in circles that are close to the ecumenical movement, but who however want to remain anonymous. The letter which judges the Catholic Church in an arrogant and derogatory manner, is dangerous to the "ecumenical climate", especially in view of the approaching Ecumenical Church Council in spring 2010 in Munich. The Catholic German Bishops' Conference called on the EKD to clarify the matter.

Upper Consistory Member Thies Gundlach, one of the key leaders in the EKD-management team of the religious affairs office analysed in a six-page internal memorandum in June, the situation of the Catholic Church. In it he wrote, among other things, about the chairman of the Bishops' Conference, the Archbishop of Freiburg Robert Zollitsch, "A guiding and formative power does not emanate from him." or: "Like a punch-drunk fighter, the Catholic Church fluctuates between open gestures and unclear demarcations between ecumenical openings and self-profiling demarcation."

The spokesman for the bishops' conference, Matthias Kopp, commented on only two sentences in the EKD paper, - and they are about church relations and the sensitive field of ecumenism so clearly to demonstrate the anger of Catholics about the letter: "These are harsh sentences "Kopp said "We believe that the Protestant side should clarify this matter as soon as possible and seek to talk."

Protestant ecumenical circles that want to remain anonymous commented with horror on the "explosive power" of Gundlach's letter: "This is not just any paper." Gundlach who is reputed to have ambitions to be a bishop in the EKD counts as one of the chief thinkers of the EKD, as the third most powerful person in the central body of the church and possible successor to Hermann Barth, who heads the office until next year.

The EKD paper raises a shadow over the Second Ecumenical Church Assembly in May 2010,. The organisers had hoped that the confusion which came over the ecumenical movement, especially after the publication of the controversial Pope's letter "Dominus Jesus" in 2000 would be then forgotten. Now, however, that the Protestant side has caused raised eyebrows this will not be easy.

CathconIn another part of the document, it says that the only time Archbishop Zollitsch spoke clearly was about the SSPX!!!

Monday, October 05, 2009

After months of cliffhanging, the investigation into the controversial Bishop and Holocaust denier Richard Williamson is progressing again. According to the Regensburg Prosecutor's Office on Monday, the case now has before them a declaration of a Swedish television company. A reporter from Sweden interviewed last year, the bishop of the ultra-conservative SSPX. Williamson had forcibly relativised the mass murder of Jews. Because of legal issues, a journalist in Sweden could not so far be questioned. Now, the investigators are examining the new letter.

Gratefully remembering their heroic and unremitting struggle to regain the rightful independence of our Nation,

And seeking to promote the common good, with due observance of Prudence, Justice and Charity, so that the dignity and freedom of the individual may be assured, true social order attained, the unity of our country restored, and concord established with other nations,

Throughout my 39 years as a priest in the Church of England, my wife has been a source of 'society, help and comfort' not only for me, but also for the countless people I have served. Indeed, while I retired from the parochial ministry last year, she still visits my former parishioners, because they have become her friends.

Explicit holiness doesn't come into it. Blinkers off, Mr Gillibrand: priests' wives have a caring and loving ministry of their own, which has nothing to do with the Church hierarchy."